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Caine (77) said he could not bear to see his dad in anguish and advocated voluntary euthanasia in circumstances “where life is no longer bearable”.

He kept the circumstances of the death a secret from his mother and has not spoken of that night in 1957 until now.

Maurice Micklewhite was 56 and dying of liver cancer when Caine visited him in St Thomas' Hospital, London.

The actor recalls: “I was in such anguish over the pain he was in that I said to this doctor, I said: ‘Isn't there anything else you could . . . Just give him an overdose and end this'. Because I wanted him to go. And he said, ‘Oh, no, no, no, we couldn't do that'.

“And then as I was leaving, he said ‘come back at midnight'. I came back at midnight and my father died at five past 12. So he'd done it.”